I would say that Little Hawk seems to have a pretty good grasp of the general idea.

Consider that the Gospels, from which we derive our notions of what Jesus said and did, were written decades after his death, and by men who were not there at the time and did not actually see him, know him, or hear him speak. Many conservative Christians—and definitely the fundamentalists—are not dismayed by this. They believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and of the Gospels. It's all true, they maintain, because the men who wrote the Bible were inspired directly by God.

I would be drummed out of the corps for saying so of course, but I don't believe this. The Bible was selected and compiled by men, inspired or otherwise, from a bloody-great stack of material, and there is plenty that was left out (I'm almost tempted to say that there is "nothing sacred about it," but discretion cautions me to refrain). I believe that there is a lot in the Gospels that is attributed to Jesus that he never actually said, or at the very least, is distorted. I have a number of reasons for taking this position. First, I am instantly suspicious of the idea that any particular individual was "inspired by God." Much evil has taken place in the world because of people who claimed to have been inspired by God and by the hordes who believed in them (think up your own historical examples; there are a lot of them). Dangerous assumption. Second, for some decades after Jesus' crucifixion, these stories and sayings were relayed by oral tradition. Now, I think those who frequent this web site have some knowledge of the vagaries inherent in the oral tradition. Comprenez-vous "folk process?" I rest my case. It was many decades after Jesus departed that the Gospels were written, by men who decided (quite probably noting that the fish kept getting bigger every time the story got told) that they had better write this down before it gets screwed up entirely. Four of these men were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

But they weren't the only ones. Alan Millard, in Discoveries From the Time of Jesus said, "Today we know of just over thirty papyrus manuscripts of New Testament books which can be dated before the fourth century. Each copy has its own oddities and mistakes: no two are completely identical, or the same as the Codex Sinaiticus [ca. 350 C.E.] or other later manuscripts. . . . In the Gospels there are about seventy places altogether where scholars are doubtful about the original reading—that is to say, are unsure whether one group of manuscripts or another has the correct words."   

Also, there is considerable evidence of the one-time existence of a manuscript containing the actual sayings of Jesus that someone took down at the time he said them. It didn't talk about Jesus' birth or his death, or any miracles he is alleged to have performed, it was strictly a collection of quotations. The manuscript no longer exists (or, at least, has not been found), but it is believed by a number of theologians and historians that the first Gospel written was Mark's, and that Matthew and Luke, unaware of each other's writing, both borrowed from Mark and from a copy of the lost manuscript. By going through the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew's, Mark's and Luke's) and making an exhaustive comparison of similar statements reputed to have been made by Jesus, a group of hard-nosed theologians have put together a list of Jesus' quotes from these three Gospels and rated them in terms of "Quite probably said it," "May have said it," and "Doubtful that he said it." There are a number of books on the subject, and there is a great deal of information and discussion of this on the internet. Put "Q Gospel" into the search box in google, and cyberspace with cough it up for you. HERE's one, for openers.

Whether Jesus ever actually claimed to be God is in the "Doubtful" column. And whether Jesus actually said that he was the only way is also in the "Doubtful" column.

Of course, conservative Christians and fundamentalists shriek, wail, stamp on their hats, and tell you that you are buying a one-way ticket of Hell whenever you mention the Q Gospel (the three way breakdown), but considering the inconsistencies and contradictions contained in the Gospels, this kind of analysis makes a lot of sense to me. Whether our brains evolved out of a primitive clump of ganglia, or they were given to us by God, they are there for us to use, and I think we should use them.   

Don Firth